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This chapter provides a review of New Testament work since 1902, looking mostly at the movements in British scholarship, but considering their continental European and North American background. It examines the manifold setting of New Testament study during the century, which is followed by comments that arose successively from three periods: 1902–32, 1932–77, and 1977–2002. The interaction of the two principal sides of New Testament study – the theological and the philological – are also discussed.

Prophecy plays an important role in the Old Testament. This importance does not end but continues throughout early Judaism, albeit under different forms and genres such as apocalyptic literature, eschatological prophecy, clerical prophecy, and sapiental prophecy. It equally continues in the history and writings of the early church. The New Testament portrays Christ as the supreme prophet in not merely forwarding words of God to God's people, but being the word of God. Prophecy continued to mutate in the history of Christianity but kept its vigor. It re-emerged in the monastic movements, medieval visionary mysticism, passion mysticism, the great Marian apparitions, augmenting in the 19th century, and in possible contemporary prophetic personalities such as the Greek-Orthodox Vassula Rydén.

This chapter reexamines New Testament traditions concerning the Last Supper and Jesus’ overturning the tables in the Jerusalem temple. It argues that the last supper can be understood as a symbolic act seeking to emulate the temple, affirming its efficacy and meaning. The temple incident is understood as a development of earlier prophetic notions concerning the rejection of stolen sacrifices. In his concern for the poor — and in line with his communitarian social message — Jesus overturned the tables in the temple because he rejected the idea that the poor should be charged at all for their sacrifices. The differing rabbinic perspective on this question is also explored. The chapter concludes with brief survey of anti-temple polemics found in Acts, Hebrews, and Revelation.

Charles Francis Digby Moule (1908–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was probably the most influential British New Testament scholar of his time. The youngest of their three children, he was born in the same house as his father, and spent a happy if often solitary childhood in China. Moule spent three years studying theology and training for Holy Orders in the Church of England at Ridley Hall. He soon had to take on leadership of New Testament teaching at the University of Cambridge for the Regius Professor, A. M. Ramsey. Moule was also fascinated, without losing his head as a critic, by the associated question of interaction between liturgy and literature in the early church, posed by such cultic interpreters of the gospels as G. Bertram. He joined the Evangelical Fellowship for Theological Literature, founded in 1942, an impressive body of younger authors that came to include Henry Chadwick, G. W. H. Lampe, S. L. Greenslade, and F. W. Dillistone; the moving spirit was Max Warren.

This chapter discusses the gospel message as it was transmitted in “proto-orthodox” Christian communities in the first through fourth centuries CE “Proto-Orthodox” communities were those early Christian communities whose teachings were consistent with those of later-existing Christian churches. The chapter shows how the basic gospel message was embedded in New Testament texts; how it was transmitted in an oral tradition alongside the New Testament texts and formed the basis of early Christian creeds; and how it helped structure the canon of Christian scripture as it developed in the first through fourth centuries CE.

Describes the various versions of New Testament texts and translations circulating in the second century. They can be divided into groups with variants arising from differing local usages, with a slow but steady tendency towards standardization. Greek originals were translated into other languages, especially Syriac and Latin, and the Old Latin translations remained in use until Jerome produced his revised version.

This chapter examines the theme of suffering in imitation of Jesus in the New Testament and literature of the Jesus movement. It begins with a discussion of the importance of mimesis and imitation in the ancient world and argues that rather than viewing imitation in New Testament literature as “discipleship” and imitation in noncanonical literature as “imitation,” we should treat both in a similar manner. It argues, as a result of this position, that the idea of following Jesus by suffering like him was an important component of discipleship and feature of exhortation in the writings of the Jesus movement (including the Pauline epistles, gospels of Mark and Luke, 1 Peter, Hebrews, Revelation, First Clement, and writings of Ignatius).

Several places in the text of the Gospel of Mary have parallels to traditions and/or sayings which appear in texts which (later) formed part of the ‘New Testament’. Some of these parallels are at the level of significant words or phrases, while others are at the level of broader thematic parallels (or in some cases almost ‘anti-parallels’, i.e., showing significant differences from, as well as similarities to, the New Testament). This chapter addresses the question of whether the similarities and parallels in wording indicate any kind of dependence of the Gospel of Mary on New Testament texts, and, so, whether we can be any more precise about the source(s) of the language used in the Gospel of Mary. The parallels between the Gospel of Mary and New Testament texts may be divided into three groups: (1) parallels that appear to be clear ‘echoes’ or ‘allusions’ to New Testament passages; (2) parallels that are less close, and are not so clearly ‘echoes’ of New Testament passages; (3) more general thematic parallels. The nature of the parallels that seem to exist, and the fact that some of the parallels involve at times redactional elements on the side of the (later to become) canonical texts suggests that the Gospel of Mary is primarily a witness to the later, developing tradition generated by these texts, and does not provide independent witness to early Jesus tradition itself.

Recent scholarship on food in the New Testament has tended to highlight the relationship of Christian and Jewish meals in the first century AD to Graeco-Roman meals. This too often obscures the relationship that these meals have with the Old Testament Scriptures and Jewish tradition. A brief examination of the Lucan theme of reversal, the juxtaposition of table and court in Mark, and the Pauline presentation of the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians show that there are a number of important links with understandings of food and its symbolism found in the Old Testament

This concluding chapter continues the ‘case study’ of ‘James’, a young man raised in a non-Christian home who is converted to Christianity but subsequently exposed to sceptical claims about the incarnational narrative of the New Testament. A number of possible responses that James could make to the sceptical claims are considered, looking at the case in which James himself is able to carry out a deeper investigation of the problems by devoting some serious study to contemporary historical scholarship concerning the story of Jesus. Such an examination can be undertaken at many different levels, and at some levels, a great amount of preliminary knowledge is required in order to be competent to form critical judgements. The situation is investigated by imagining various levels of study on the part of James. These are (in order of increasing level): a review of the conclusions of important scholars; an examination of the criteria of authenticity employed by many New Testament scholars, and the uncertainty that may emerge from this; other, deeper reasons for doubts about critical historical scholarship (philosophical and literary assumptions); the problem of biblical historical critics as an interpretative (rather than an objective) community; and apologetics (old and new).